the rage in check, but his lips curled back in a deadly smile. 'Our glorious Patriarch doesn't care if his Heroes conquer or die trying. As long as they leave Kzin and the Inner Sun with dreams of wealth and glory they offer his court no reason to give up their prett and their palace games. Why lead when the fools go willingly for a chance at a half-name beneath a courtier's contempt? But now we must fight for survival rather than conquest and the Heroes are not so eager to go. Soon the Patriarch will have to lead or be killed by a leader. Then, monkey-man, the kzin will fight a war that humans will understand. Pledge your ears you do not survive it!”
The kzin had leaned so far forward he was in a half crouch barely supported by the prrstet behind him. His ears were cocked fully forward, his eyes fixed on Long's. Again Long groped for an answer that would defuse the conversation while keeping it moving.
The door chime interrupted his train of thought. He'd completely forgotten the meal he'd ordered. Perhaps the interlude would help to relieve the tension. He thumbed the keypad and the door slid open, revealing an orderly carrying a tray.
Fleet Commander screamed and leaped, bowling Long over before he could react and yanking the startled orderly inside and on top of Long in one fluid motion. He landed against the wall, cushioning the impact with both feet and one arm while he reached around the door frame with the other. He rebounded and his arm came back dragging the outside guard. The kzin did a neat backflip and completed his return jump upside down, landing on top of the guard against the police web. He flicked the web on with one foot, pushed off and flipped again. Long had managed to untangle himself from the dazed orderly and was reaching for the comm button when the kzin landed in front of him and seized his shirtfront with a massive fist. Fleet Commander picked up the orderly with the other hand, turned and hung them both on the web beside the guard. The kzin was no rougher than he needed to be, but the web's field strength was still set on maximum. It grabbed Longs body in a steel vice and slammed him against the backplate. His head hit the metal too hard. His vision swam and darkness fell.
Consciousness returned slowly, like a bubble rising through syrup. At first his eyes wouldn't open, then he remembered that he was in a police web He could hear the marine and the orderly breathing beside him. His own breathing wasn't restricted, so Fleet Commander must have turned down the field setting. Even so, fighting the sticky resistance was almost more than he could manage. Eventually he got both eyelids up, but there was little improvement. His vision swam, the room lights were painfully bright. The kzin was just an orange blob, bent over the data terminal. Bent over the data terminal! Adrenalin surged and the scene snapped into focus. How had the kzin gained access to the computer? He hadn't yet been given his ident. Datacubes were stacked on the desk and on the floor beside it, kzinti virtual adventures. Why would he stage this attack only to watch a holo? He didn't even have the eyegoggles on. Nothing made sense.
With a shock Long realized where Fleet Commander had obtained a logon code. The kzin must have memorized Long's when he ordered the meal. He wasn't watching the holos, he was overwriting them – with whatever he could download under intelligence authorization. Clearly the kzin felt it was a prize worth violating his word for, although how he intended to get the information off Andromeda was an open question.
Perhaps he could still appeal to his captor's warrior code Shame was a strong motivator among kzinti. 'So this is how the warrior honors his promise,' he said with as much contempt as he could muster.
The kzin put down a hardcopy he was studying and looked up. No trace of his previous emotion remained in his gaze His ears were at relaxed attention as he studied his prisoner. Eventually he spoke.
'I promised not to harm you, Major Long. I haven't and I won't. However I must ask you not to disturb me or I will have to turn the field strength up to a level you will find uncomfortable.' Without waiting for a reply he bent over his work again.
Long shut up. He had nothing useful to say, but if he thought of anything it would be easier to say it without the web field clamping his jaw shut. Instead he turned his head to see his companions. The marine's helmet had been removed, revealing a surprisingly young blond woman. She was either asleep or unconscious but her breathing was steady. Her body blocked his view of the orderly. He spent a moment reflecting ruefully on the kzin's promise. Clearly Fleet Commander didn't feel bruises, sprains or concussions qualified as injury. Perhaps the other Heroes he had interrogated felt the same way, but they had tacitly accepted a human context when they gave their promises. He wondered if Fleet Commander's reservation was deliberate or not. Long decided it was. From the very beginning he had demonstrated his flexibility and resourcefulness. What was the kzin planning to do? He mulled it over, reviewing every aspect of the interview trying to get some angle on the kzin's thought processes. It was hard trying to force thoughts past the throbbing in his temples, but he persevered. There was nothing else to do.
After what seemed like hours Fleet Commander got up stretching luxuriously. He padded over to the prrstet and tore several strips of fabric from it. Returning to the desk he fashioned the cloth into a crude satchel, filling it with the datacubes and a stack of hardcopies. He slung the bundle over one shoulder and the guards beamrifle over the other, walked to the door and thumbed the doorplate. The door refused to open.
Longs momentary surge of hope was cut short when the kzin came back to the police web and plucked him off it. Fleet Commander carried him to the door like a rag doll, uncurled his clenched fist and applied his thumb to the plate with no more effort than it took to unseal a mealpack. The door slid open. Fleet Commander dropped his satchel in view of its close sensor and unceremoniously hung Long back in the web.
At the door Fleet Commander paused to pick up his satchel, then turned around and saluted, not with a kzinti claw rake but with an open palm to the side of his forehead, UNSN style. In Wunderlander English
'His first target was the bridge. He was almost there before anyone managed to get in a warning. They'd just sounded the security alert when he took them out. It's a mess. He wrecked the computer core, communications, weapons control, everything. No survivors.”
'Didn't the pressure doors seal with the alert? How did he get through them?”
Tskala winced. 'He tore off the captain's hand and used his thumbprint.”
Long was silent.
'From the bridge he went to the hangar bay. The marines were in position by then, for all the good it did us. We lost four squads like that. Once in the hangar he boarded a civilian prospector's singleship. He put a hole in every other ship there with the mining laser, blew up the lock-field poles and left.”
'Any pursuit?”
'Nobody outside Andromeda knew what was going on. Nobody inside knew either, for that matter.”
Long understood. By destroying the bridge Fleet Commander had effectively blown Andromeda's brains out. Her crew could no longer function as a cohesive unit. Instead small groups tried to follow their last orders as well as possible, unsure of the nature of the threat. Lacking information and direction there was little they could do to help each other. The kzin had gone through them like a force knife. The other Navy ships in the area probably hadn't even known there was a problem. By the time control could be reestablished and warnings issued the singleship would have been long gone.
He took a deep breath. 'If there's any blame to bear it belongs to me. He was my responsibility. I failed to – “
Tskala cut him off. 'If there was any negligence involved I'm sure it will come out before the Court of Inquiry. Right now I don't have time for blame. I need to know what you learned from him, and I need to know what he learned from us.”
'From us he got about fifty datacubes full.”
The admiral blanched. 'Fifty datacubes! What was on them?”
'Kzin virtual adventures originally. He copied over them. I'm sure he took the operating manuals for the singleship and anything else he needed for his escape, probably all my interrogation records, beyond that I don't know, anything he could access with my ident code. If we can't get the databanks running again… “
He didn't go on. As an intelligence officer Long had access to nearly everything but need-to-know secrets. Because of her mission Andromeda's computer contained vast amounts of sensitive information. Ship schedules, code keys, automanuals for every piece of equipment in the fleet, UNSN operating procedures, hundreds of algorithms, inventories and rosters. The list was endless. A datacube would hold over five thousand automanuals. Fifty datacubes would barely scratch the surface of what was available, but if what was on them couldn't be determined then everything in the system had to be considered compromised. Millions of hours of work would have to be thrown out to ensure security. Beyond that the losses were staggering. Codes and procedures could be changed, weapon capabilities couldn't.
The kzinti had gained an advantage that might well mean the difference between victory and defeat.
